The last decade has seen China use its growing economy to expand its influence around the globe. It has been a conscious, announced policy to use loans to foreign government, build highways and hospitals and invest in companies all over the globe to build goodwill, influence and set itself up for global expansion.
The article below talks about how the current pandemic seems to be another way that the Chinese government hopes to ‘spin’ the crisis, which actually began in China, to a way to further its influence. China is making big publicity out of shipping health supplies to other countries to help fight the pandemic started by its poor sanitation laws (though in the US, most of the testing kits that China sent proved to be inaccurate).
Thinking Man's Politics 